Comments on: Want Skype on your mobile phone? Swedes will have to pay

By: Kristin

Kristin — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 12:26:34 +0000

I use Vyke when i´m at school in England to talk with my family. Its good and cheap :)

By: Agnieszka

Agnieszka — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 13:13:01 +0000

I know Vyke and use it for my international calls from UK, mostly to Poland. Their charges are transparent and there’s rarely any issue with connection/quality…would recommend it if you prefer an easy way to call (on the go so to speak) without having to swap sim cards or enter lots of digits…

By: Julian

Julian — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 09:19:19 +0000

You can still benefit from extraordinarily cheap international rates by using companies like Vyke. They offer VoIP services, but they also offer callthrough and callback services (non-VoIP) at the same price and with higher quality since they don’t rely on the internet and teliasonnera throttling games. Vyke has a fantastic offer – the VykeZone- and they charge only $0.15 per hour to a good bunch of countries. And the best of all, they are pre-paid, you use them when you need to use them without having to compromise on monthly contracts or plans. I use Vyke and I am very happy about their service.

By: Steve K

Steve K — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 16:21:13 +0000

There is network neutrality in terms of equal access and not blocking, choking or censoring certain things, and then there is the “money for nothing and your chicks for free” cry of folks who play shell games with their usage.
Maybe what is needed is some sort of “power” calculation that factors bandwidth at points in time, with total bytes transferred so that whatever you use the bytes for, you are charged fairly for accessing the infrastructure to transfer them. Granted there has been plenty of gouging going on. On both sides. Carriers charge for this and offer that at a lower rate as an enticement. Users figure out how to use the lower cost element to perform the higher cost function, so the carrier has to flip things around. The the chase is on.
“Network” neutrality is a nice catch phrase, but that network is not just there for free as a public service paid for by mysterious persons out of the goodness of their hearts. It is a lot of very expensive hardware (which this blog constantly covers so people here ought to have an appreciation for what it takes to put it there), millions of miles of interconnections and hoards of maintenance people, all to support people transferring information.
True network neutrality, the kind that supported the Arab Spring and countless other examples of connectedness between people, is a very important thing. It should be supported, lobbied for and outed whenever it is compromised. But it dilutes this noble value when the term also gets used for finagles to take advantage over complex carrier promotional cost structures.